Effect of trade on global aquatic food consumption patterns

Kangshun Zhao, Steven D. Gaines, Jorge García Molinos, Min Zhang () and Jun Xu ()
Additional contact information
Kangshun Zhao: Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Steven D. Gaines: University of California
Jorge García Molinos: Hokkaido University
Min Zhang: College of Fisheries, Huazhong Agricultural University
Jun Xu: Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Globalization of fishery products is playing a significant role in shaping the harvesting and use of aquatic foods, but a vigorous debate has focused on whether the trade is a driver of the inequitable distribution of aquatic foods. Here, we develop species-level mass balance and trophic level identification datasets for 174 countries and territories to analyze global aquatic food consumption patterns, trade characteristics, and impacts from 1976 to 2019. We find that per capita consumption of aquatic foods has increased significantly at the global scale, but the human aquatic food trophic level (HATL), i.e., the average trophic level of aquatic food items in the human diet, is declining (from 3.42 to 3.18) because of the considerable increase in low-trophic level aquaculture species output relative to that of capture fisheries since 1976. Moreover, our study finds that trade has contributed to increasing the availability and trophic level of aquatic foods in >60% of the world’s countries. Trade has also reduced geographic differences in the HATL among countries over recent decades. We suggest that there are important opportunities to widen the current focus on productivity gains and economic outputs to a more equitable global distribution of aquatic foods.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45556-w Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:15:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-024-45556-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-45556-w

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().